Political clash on border security

A 1,200-mile stretch of Texas real estate is being used for political football.

Ask the president of the United States and the governor of Texas, and the border cities that stretch from Brownsville to El Paso are either "among the safest in the nation" or "not safe" at all.

In a speech this spring to pitch comprehensive immigration reform, President Barack Obama declared Southwest border cities relatively peaceful and peril-free. Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, in both his capacity as Texas' tough-talking chief executive and front-runner among the GOP's 2012 presidential hopefuls, ridiculed the assertion, saying in a nationally televised debate this month that Obama either has "some of the poorest intel" or was "an abject liar."

And while Obama touts the doubling of Border Patrol agents to more than 20,000, as well as a drop in immigration detentions and low crime rates along the border, as evidence that the area is secure, Perry disagrees. The governor says he has been forced to spend state money to secure a violence-ridden region.

Turns out, neither man is quite accurate.

Drug seizures haven't fallen. But more resources are being devoted to the Southwest border. And last year, you were more likely to be slain in Austin, considered among the safest large cities in the country, than in El Paso, across the river from one of the most dangerous cities in the hemisphere.

"Brownsville all the way to El Paso, we're always getting the bum rap ... just simply for being on the border," said Gilberto Salinas, vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council, sighing at the perception that Mexican drug cartel operatives can easily cross the narrow Rio Grande and open fire near schools, supermarkets and town squares, as they do in Mexico.

"People still think that we're walking around with six-shooters," he said, "that the U.S.-Mexico border is still the Wild Wild West."

The numbers speak

Instead, Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso have recently recorded low homicide figures, even as populations of those cities ballooned.

According to crime statistics analyzed by the San Antonio Express-News, El Paso, the safest, had less than one homicide per 100,000 residents last year. Laredo had 3.81, and Brownsville had four.

All tallied homicide rates lower than Houston, San Antonio and Austin, which last year recorded 4.8 for every 100,000 residents.

"I think the stats speak for themselves," said Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas, a former FBI agent.

At the same time, the border cities saw tremendous population growth over the past decade: Laredo and Brownsville surged nearly 34 percent and 25 percent respectively, while El Paso grew about 15 percent to 649,121, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"It's not a coincidence that we are on steroids when it comes to growth," said Salinas of Brownsville, citing a lengthy list of Fortune 500 companies that have moved to the area, bringing jobs to both sides of the border.

Rumors persist near the border that drug traffickers are targeting and intimidating ranchers, but few incidents can be confirmed. Still, Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, says the U.S. government has "lost operational" control of rural areas.

Traffickers continue to fund their criminal enterprises, he said, making it more dangerous for U.S. citizens in Mexico and allowing the cartels to expand their influence in Texas.

And they have become increasingly confrontational with law enforcement officials.

"They throw spikes. They have blocking vehicles," McCraw said. "And they have drug cartel boats on our side, and they have cartel operatives on the other side of the river."

What's more, there's no evidence that the U.S. government is slowing the flow of drugs entering the country. The cartels continue to move their wares with impunity and fund their violent enterprises on both sides of the border, Perry and McCraw have said.

Spillover violence

Perry, who has cast himself as a border hawk, regularly decries what he has said is spillover violence into the U.S., citing examples that, it turns out, are rare.

A look at drug-related killings in border cities during the four years since Mexican President Felipe Calderón came to power shows no relationship between a rise in homicides in Mexican municipalities and the number of killings in their U.S. sister cities.

"There's a lot more awareness, and the efforts are a lot better coordinated intelligence-wise and operationally," said Gilberto Navarro, an assistant police chief in Laredo.

Brownsville has seen incidents described as spillover, such as the September 2010 double homicide of two alleged cartel operatives less than a mile from a Border Patrol station and the shutdown the year before of the University of Texas at Brownsville campus after stray bullets from Mexico struck a building, an incident Perry mentions in his book, "Fed Up!"

But the city's murder rate, from five to 10 slayings a year, is in line with other cities of its size, Brownsville officials said.

Shoring up the Southwest border remains a priority for the administration. The Homeland Security Department, which oversees international bridges and the Border Patrol, has a budget of $57 billion for 2012, the largest since the agency's creation in 2003.

And Texas regularly takes the bulk of the department's Operation Stonegarden grant, which provides money to local law enforcement agencies along the border, $17.8 million of the $54.9 million spread over 18 states this year. The feds also have dispatched two drones to patrol the Texas-Mexico border, with a third on the way.

Despite all that federal spending, Perry says he's had to take matters into his own hands. According to his office, Texas has spent $400 million in the past five years on border security, including grants for local law enforcement agencies and deploying Texas Rangers to the Rio Grande.

Playing politics

For years, Perry has used the border and illegal immigration as a campaign tactic. But during last week's debate, he was on the defensive as the other GOP candidates attacked his record, in particular his statements that the border fence is not an effective way to stop smuggling.

All the rhetoric about the border has officials in El Paso fuming.

Bob Cook, president and CEO of El Paso's Regional Economic Development Corp., said he called Perry's head of economic development the day after the Sept. 7 debate to again share data about the safety of El Paso. Of the five homicides in that city last year, three were attributed to domestic violence; the other two were a murder-suicide.

There are more than 6,500 state, local and federal law enforcement personnel in El Paso, officials said, and 3,400 people cross the border every day to work in Mexican factories.

But Perry, during the Sept. 7 debate, targeted that city, saying Obama, in calling the area among the safest, "either ... has some of the poorest intel of a president in the history of this country, or he was an abject liar to the American people. It is not safe on that border."

So why the apparent disconnect in the governor's message and the crime statistics?

"You'd have to ask the governor that," Cook said. "I was in Austin and met the governor's staff and gave them much of the information I gave you. It was before the debate."

El Paso Mayor John Cook, who is not related to Bob Cook, calls it flat-out politics.

"It's partisan politics at play," Cook said. "Your party becomes more important than your country. In the case of the Texas leadership, your political party becomes more important than the success of the cities that are part of the state."